As credit markets have imploded, triggering a global economic crisis, Islamically correct investors have seen a change of fortune: The conservative principles this small group of devout Muslims clung to during the economic heyday has insulated them from the worst of the past year's suffering.

Their renunciation of the interest-based economy kept them away from investments in financial services companies, whose stocks have collapsed, and out of traditional mortgages.

"There was a time two or three years ago that Islamic finance was considered simply too conservative," said Professor Ibrahim Warde, author of "Islamic Finance in the Global Economy" and an adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. "Right now, many people are recognizing that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing."